In November 2008 Australian ISP iiNet was hit with a lawsuit brought about by Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Disney, and local TV broadcaster Seven Network. The charge was copyright infringement, but not through anything the ISP had done directly. Instead the charge was aimed at stopping the company allowing its customers to commit copyright infringement.

The accusation was summed up by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) as follows:

iiNet refused to address this illegal behaviour and did nothing to prevent the continuation of the infringements by the same customers … iiNet has an obligation under the law to take steps to prevent further known copyright infringement via its network … Our members have asked the court to order the ISP to act to prevent the continuing unauthorised use of copies of our titles by its customers, consistent with iiNet’s own terms and conditions which prohibit illegal activity on its network.

iiNet were having none of it with CEO Mark Malone commenting:

I think they genuinely believe that ISPs have a secret magic wand that we are hiding and if we bring it out we can make piracy disappear just by waving it.

Needless to say it went to court and today it has been announced iiNet won the case. The court ruled an ISP cannot be held accountable for what its customers download with the Federal Court Justice Dennis Cowdroy stating:

I find that the mere provision of access to the internet is not the ‘means’ of infringement … If the ISPs become responsible for the acts of their customers, essentially they become this giant and very cheap mechanism for anyone with any sort of legal claim.

I’m sure 99% of the population of Australia are glad to see this case go in favor of iiNet. It was started with little understanding of the role of an ISP and seemed down right lazy on the part of the movie studios. Not wanting to come up with another solution to piracy closer to home, say, managing their content more securely before release. And also not wanting to take the time to track where content leaks actually occurred.

The ISP should be an independent gateway to the Internet whose main purpose is to ensure fast connections for all customers. Talk of monitoring sounds great for governments and copyright holders, but turns into an expensive and unworkable nightmare for ISPs.

Hopefully the iiNet decision sets a precedent for other future court cases, but I suspect there will be appeals, calls for a new judge, and further lawsuits brought in an attempt to change this decision.